Twisted (2026): When Brain Surgery Meets Real Estate Fraud in Bousman’s Gory Morality Play

Film Title: Twisted (2026)
Also Known As: The Monster
Cast: Djimon Hounsou, Lauren LaVera, Mia Healey, Neal McDonough, Alicia Witt
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Writers: Jonathan Bernstein & James Greer
Distribution: Republic Pictures
Production: Envision Media Arts / Sterling Light Productions / Twisted Pictures
Release Date: February 6, 2026
Streaming: Amazon Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home
Rating: R (strong/bloody violence, gore, sexual assault, suicide, language, sexual material)
Runtime: 1h 33m

Review by: Mother of Movies

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When Your Airbnb Scam Meets a Neurosurgeon’s Frankenstein Fantasy

There’s something perversely American about Twisted, a film where millennial grifters running real estate cons collide headfirst with a surgeon who’s basically if Dr. Frankenstein had a medical license. Darren Lynn Bousman, the man who turned Saw into a franchise theology lesson, returns with what can only be described as Get Out meets Hostel with a dash of Single White Female energy. It’s messy, it’s brutal, and it knows exactly what kind of B-movie trash fire it wants to be.

Paloma (Lauren LaVera) and Smith (Mia Healey) are lesbian lovers running a rental scam across New York. They break into high-end properties, forge keys, disable security cameras, and pose as landlords collecting hefty deposits before vanishing into the night. It’s the kind of hustle that only works until you target someone smarter, richer, and exponentially more unhinged than you. Enter Dr. Robert Kezian (Djimon Hounsou), a towering neurosurgeon with a side hobby: experimental brain transplants that would make Josef Mengele blush.

What starts as a cat-and-mouse thriller quickly devolves into full-blown body horror once Kezian realizes Paloma isn’t just another mark, she’s the perfect test subject. Bousman doesn’t waste time with subtlety. The moment Kezian “accidentally” cuts Paloma with his ring during a house tour, you know this isn’t going to end with a stern lecture about fraud. This is going to end with scalpels, screaming, and someone’s frontal lobe getting repurposed.

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LaVera and Healey in Amongst the Chaos

Lauren LaVera, fresh off her Terrifier 2 / Terrifier 3 horror icon coronation, brings a subtle desperation to Paloma. She’s not some cartoonish villain; she’s a survivor hustling because the system failed her long before she started scamming it. The film peppers in Paloma’s backstory through monologues delivered to Lenny (Renes Rivera), Kezian’s lobotomized bodyguard. It’s a narrative device that could’ve felt clunky (and sometimes does), but LaVera sells every word, making you root for someone who absolutely should not be sympathetic.

Mia Healey’s Smith is the quieter half of the duo, the one who wants out, who dreams of a life where they’re not constantly looking over their shoulders. The chemistry between LaVera and Healey is genuine. When Smith texts “I love you,” and Paloma replies “I love you too,” instead of their usual “same,” it’s a small detail that becomes a devastating plot point later.

Djimon Hounsou, meanwhile, is doing career-best villain work. Kezian isn’t a cackling madman. He’s methodical in his delusion. His ex-wife Rebecca (Alicia Witt) suffers from a degenerative brain disease, and his obsession with consciousness transfer stems from a desperate, twisted love. Hounsou plays him with the kind of cold precision that makes you believe this man genuinely thinks he’s saving humanity, one illegal brain surgery at a time. When his face shifts into that Hulk-like rage, eyes narrowing, jaw clenching, it’s genuinely unsettling (and sometimes hilarious).

Bousman’s Signature: Torture with a Thesis

If you’ve seen any of Bousman’s Saw sequels, you know he loves his moral quandaries wrapped in viscera. Twisted is no different. The film constantly asks: Who’s the real monster here? The women scamming desperate renters, or the surgeon playing God in his basement? It’s not a particularly original question, but Bousman stages it with enough commitment to know the answer is neither… but who cares when it’s this off the wall?

The surgical sequences are where the film deploys its R rating. When Kezian finally straps Paloma and the man who tried to rape her (David Call) onto adjoining tables, the camera doesn’t flinch. He extracts a piece of Smith’s brain, who has been accidentally stabbed by Paloma during a rescue attempt, and implants it into the rapist’s skull. The result? A grotesque hybrid who wakes up parroting Paloma’s catchphrase (“Suck my dick”) before Paloma tearfully says “I love you,” and the creature responds with “same.” It’s darkly poetic in a way that feels utterly deranged. But we like it for that.

The practical effects deserve mention. In an era where CGI blood has become the lazy default, Twisted commits to squibs, prosthetics, and genuine ooey gooey viscera. When Lenny (the lobotomized henchman) shoots himself in the head, the splatter is real enough to make you wince.

Where the Scalpel Slips

But Twisted isn’t without its flaws. The pacing drags in the second act, spending too much time on Paloma’s captivity without advancing the plot. We get it, she’s chained up, Kezian is preparing her for surgery, and Smith is frantically searching. The film could’ve trimmed 10 minutes here without losing anything. But for some reason, we needed to be clued in to Lenny’s brain activity. He isn’t just a muscly robot; he has big feelings too.

The detective subplot, two cops tracking Paloma through her Jane Austen alias pattern, feels undercooked. They show up at Kezian’s door just as the climax is unfolding, but their presence doesn’t meaningfully alter the outcome. It’s a narrative thread that exists solely to create false tension, and in a film already juggling brain transplants and real estate fraud, it’s one complication too many.

And then there’s the film’s treatment of sexual violence. The attempted rape scene is brutal and prolonged, shot with an uncomfortable voyeurism that Kezian himself is watching on a security feed. While it serves a narrative purpose, Paloma’s trauma becomes the catalyst for Kezian’s intervention, but it teeters dangerously close to exploitation. Bousman has always walked this tightrope in his Saw films, but here it feels less like commentary and more like shock value for its own sake. Still, it’s not like any of the Saw films were an easy ride.

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The Ending: Nihilism with a Side of Irony

The Ending of Twisted: Karma in a Snow-Stained Verandah

The climax is pure Bousman chaos. Smith, now a brain-dead shell on the operating table, becomes the unwitting donor for the rapist’s “upgrade.” Lenny, in a rare moment of lucidity, frees Paloma and then immediately ends his own suffering with a bullet. Paloma, freshly shaved and prepped for surgery, is introduced to Rebecca, Kezian’s comatose wife, and the real reason behind his obsession.

But Bousman saves his darkest twist for the final act. The film jumps forward to show Rebecca recovering, her mobility improving with each passing day. She’s the success story Kezian’s been chasing, proof that his butchery has purpose. She asks repeatedly whose brain she received. Kezian claims ignorance, a lie that feels more like self-preservation than mercy.

The final scene is almost domestic: Rebecca hands Kezian a drink on the verandah and warmly drapes her arm around him. He smiles, maybe the first genuine one we’ve seen from him. Then she echoes Paloma’s first words to him as the blade finds his throat before he can process the irony.

Kezian stumbles into the snow, and Bousman fractures the frame into a montage of squares, clinical, detached, reducing the surgeon to just another specimen bleeding out in the cold. It’s the kind of natural justice that feels both fitting and hollow.

It’s a bleak, cyclical ending that refuses catharsis, Kezian’s arrogance becomes his epitaph, and the woman he “saved” becomes his executioner. You’ll sit through the credits wondering if you just witnessed horror or a particularly savage morality tale. Probably both.

Verdict and Rating – Saw director’s New Film, Twisted Explained

 

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TWISTED is rated:

2.5 Illegal brain transplants that should’ve stayed in the basement out of 5

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Bousman’s Filmmaker Stamp: Torture as Theology

Darren Lynn Bousman made his name turning the Saw franchise into a philosophical exercise in suffering. Saw II, III, and IV all bear his signature: elaborate death traps with moral underpinnings, villains who believe they’re delivering salvation through pain, and a visual style that’s equal parts industrial grime and operatic gore. Twisted fits comfortably into that lineage. Kezian isn’t just a mad scientist. He’s a zealot convinced his experiments serve a higher purpose. Bousman has always been interested in the thin line between salvation and damnation, and Twisted explores that through the lens of medical ethics rather than Jigsaw’s games.

His other work: Repo! The Genetic Opera, Mother’s Day (2010), shows a director unafraid of genre-blending and tonal whiplash. Twisted benefits from that fearlessness, even when it doesn’t always stick the landing.

What the Internet Is Saying

Early buzz around Twisted has centered on Lauren LaVera’s continued ascent as a modern horror Goddess. After the Terrifier franchise made her a cult icon, horror fans are watching her career trajectory closely. Djimon Hounsou’s casting has also raised eyebrows; he’s typically reserved for prestige projects or blockbuster supporting roles, so seeing him go full villain in a mid-budget horror thriller is a welcome surprise.

There’s also chatter about the film’s queer representation. Paloma and Smith’s relationship is refreshingly matter-of-fact. Their sexuality does not define them, and the film doesn’t punish them for being lesbians (a tired horror trope). Instead, they’re punished for being hustlers who picked the wrong mark. It’s a small but meaningful distinction in a genre that’s historically weaponized queerness.

Neal McDonough, who plays Bradshaw (Kezian’s colleague), has built a career playing morally compromised authority figures (Van Helsing, Suits, Arrow). His presence here adds a layer of institutional complicity. Bradshaw gets a huge surprise when he finds out what Kezian is doing, and he can’t look the other way. The moment he realises just how far his friend has gone, you already know he’s not making it out

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Need More Brain-Bending Horror? Watch These:

Get Out (2017) – Social commentary meets body horror in Jordan Peele’s masterpiece about exploitation wearing a smile.

Hostel (2005) – Eli Roth’s torture porn classic, where rich elites buy the right to kill, just like Kezian buys the right to experiment.

Tusk (2014) – Kevin Smith’s body horror about a podcaster transformed against his will, with surgical nightmares and dark comedy.

The Skin I Live In (2011) – Almodóvar’s chilling tale of a surgeon creating the perfect woman through grotesque experimentation.

Faceless (2021) – A man wakes in a hospital with a stranger’s face and no memory of how he got there. This grim indie body horror keeps you guessing on identity, conspiracy, and what’s even real until a satisfying, bloody payoff.

The Welder (2023) – A weekend getaway turns nightmarish when an interracial couple stumbles into a deranged former doctor’s twisted experiments in “curing” racism. Get Out meets Frankenstein, with ambition that outpaces its budget.

Where to Watch Twisted, aka Monster 2026